Rafael drew himself up tall, and those around us scattered, sensing trouble. The two he faced froze, and one pulled a knife-wielding hand free from his cloak.
“Leave,” Rafael said. “Now.”
His voice had deepened again, and it rang with authority. The two cloaked figures turned and fled, vanishing into the crowd.
I met Lucas’s gaze. Rafael rejoined us, taking my arm. But the crowd now maintained a respectful bubble around us.
“They would have been trouble,” Rafael said.
“They would have followed us and waited for a chance to strike,” Lucas agreed. “Some of these lowlifes regularly case the inns for marks.”
Rafael sighed. “I am running low on reserves. I need crystal power if I am to be of any use.”
I perked up. Crystal dust would undoubtedly help me, too. But the request died on my lips when Lucas shot me a dark look, and said, “No more dust.”
The comment startled me enough that I said nothing at all as we crossed the road. Lucas took us past a group lurking in the shadows, and through the entrance of the dilapidated building that apparently housed the inn.
Beady eyes tracked us as we approached the front desk. The clerk handed Lucas a key, and we mounted the stairs. I forced my feet up them, but by the end of the second flight, Rafael was all but carrying me.
The hall seemed endless. Lucas let us into a tiny room with a single window, an even tinier washroom, and a double bed against the wall.
Lucas went straight to the window and glanced out. “There’s a shed roof about ten feet down,” he said. “We can bail out that way in a pinch.” He spun, looked at me, and pointed to the bed. “Sit. We need to talk.”
My automatic reaction was to resist him, but when Rafael sat, my legs refused to hold me, and I folded up next to him on the bed.
Lucas winced as he retracted his wings into his shoulders and stood opposite us with his arms crossed. “Morphs have many talents. We can shift to any form we touch. But we also have weaknesses.”
Why was he telling me this? It really seemed to matter to him, though, you could see it in his expression.
“My stepmother craved crystal dust,” he explained. “I also have had my own brushes with the issue. So I recognize the signs.”
“What are you saying?” Rafael asked.
I looked from one to the other. “I took it to help me Jump, that’s all. I don’tneedit. Not like that.”
“You are addicted to it,” Lucas corrected. “That is why you are so sick. Or, one of the reasons.”
I stared at him. “There’s also the Dragon thing.”
“Yes. As well as the refusal of your thick-headed mates to culminate the bond. But I know the symptoms of crystal dust addiction rather well. And you have them.”
My heart constricted when he mentioned mates. I hadn’t realized he was following along with my issues quite so well. I just wasn’t sure why it mattered to me being so sick. I crossed my arms. “You can’t know for sure.”
“I can, and I do.” He took a deep breath. “Morphs are particularly sensitive to crystal dust.”
I snorted a laugh. “But I am not a Morph.”
“That,” he said, “Is where you’d also be wrong. The shifting to multiple forms is pretty unique to my kind.” His gaze fixed on me. “Do you have large freckles on your skin? Little clusters of stiff hairs along your spine?”
I stared at him, my mouth suddenly dry. Then I reached a hand up to the nape of my neck.
Rafael’s hand moved with mine. When his fingers touched the little cluster of stiff hairs, I swayed.
Lucas turned around and bent, showing me the back of his neck, and the long row of identical hairs that marched down his spine to disappear amid his scales. Only there was way more of them than what I had.
“How can I be a Morph?” My voice was hardly more than a whisper.
“You aren’t full Morph. And I don’t know,” Lucas admitted, dropping to a crouch to regard me with his green-rimmed eyes. Suddenly, I realized how much they looked like mine. “Humans aren’t supposed to be fertile with my kind. But with all the strange hybrids popping up now, it seems the old rules no longer apply.”
